Author: admin

Dear Teen Denise, Greetings from the future. It’s 2011. Al Franken is a senator and we have a black President (who is not Jesse Jackson or Eddie Murphy). Prince doesn’t work blue anymore, and no one wears Girbaud jeans. I come with much wisdom and excellent accessories. Okay, so maybe my wisdom and accessories are […]

Dear Teen Me, Well, guess what? You are totally going to have a grownup crush on Justin Timberlake. Don’t roll your eyes at me, it’s the truth. That boy has some serious pipes and he is damn sexy. But seriously, about the studying and the stress you put yourself through for those near perfect grades […]

Dear Teen Me: Look at you! You are so beautiful, and you don’t even know it! How beautiful and singular is your angst, your dreadful melancholy! You enjoy a freedom you don’t even realize you have – long walks and talks with your God in the wild forests and country roads by moonlight. But don’t […]

Dear Teen Me, There you are lying on your trundle bed with your feet on the wall, listening to your Beatle records over and over, with your mom gone, and your older brothers grown up and off, and neighbors calling with advice, and your younger sister and brother to take care of, and all you […]

Greetings, Teen Carey, from the glorious future. How glorious is the future, you ask? We live in a place we love, with a husband we love and friends we love, and we spend our days doing work we love.Well, let’s see. We’ve seen R.E.M., Natalie Merchant, Davy Jones, Peter Tork, and They Might Be Giants […]

Dear Susan, The churning rocks you feel in your gut will someday be the soil from which flowers will bloom. Pick up that pen and hold on to it for dear life. Keep scrawling it all into that spiral notebook until you can smell the hot blue Bic ink rising from the page and your […]

Dear Teen Me, You recently read a terrifying essay in Seventeen magazine. It was in the “It Happened to Me” column, which usually has tales of kidnapping, childhood cancer, amnesia, etc. However this past month the topic was: “I’m seventeen and I’ve never been kissed.” That’s right, the writer’s eighteenth birthday is fast approaching and […]

Dear 14 year old Holly, Your “boyfriend” is a dirtbag*. Hard to hear, but true. And I’m not using the quotes because I think he doesn’t exist, like one of your friends has been implying. I remember what he looked like and how it felt when you put your arm around his waist (you hadn’t […]

Hi, Self. What are you now, fourteen? Fifteen? What an odd, angry, shy, but spirited creature you are, really. If I met you now—in one of my classes, for example—I would be charmed but seriously concerned. High school. I’m sorry you have to go there, honey, even though it’s a good school, and your dad […]